Endoscopes are routinely used to provide direct visualization to medical personnel while performing medical procedures. To enable medical personnel to reach smaller portions of the anatomy, medical personnel often use a “baby scope.” Baby scopes are visualization catheters that are configured for disposition through a working channel of an endoscope. However, known baby scopes are difficult to use and the working channel, fluid lumen, and light lumens disposed therein are too small and/or too few in number to efficiently perform many medical procedures.
The size of the outer diameter of the baby scope is generally fixed at 3.5 mm. The internal working space available for working channel lumens, fluid lumens, and light lumens are dictated by numerous factors. Such factors, which alone or in combination contribute to a large outer diameter or reduced interior work space, include, but are not limited to, the thickness of the catheter wall, the amount and size of cabling, lighting equipment, working channel lumens disposed therein, the image gathering equipment (such as charge coupled device (“CCD”) technology) utilized to gather an image, as well as the devices necessary to maintain the proper position of each of the devices disposed within the baby scope. In other words, in the case of a CCD-equipped baby scope, the CCD sensor must be held in proper position along with all the cables, power supplies, and other equipment necessary to enable the CCD sensor to capture an image. The extraneous materials necessary to properly position the camera equipment such that it can gather an image utilize valuable space within a baby scope.
Present baby scopes suffer from additional drawbacks in addition to their minimal internal working space. These drawbacks include, but are not limited to, poor image quality and ability to capture an image from, for example, the use of bulky camera equipment.